00:00Questions? Yes, given the violent crime in D.C. that is being cracked down on with this...
00:09Okay, I'm happy to talk about violent crime in D.C. and I'm going to. I have some posters to show you.
00:14But anything on Theresa.
00:16Are there any plans to continue to send American forces to Haiti to retrieve this man?
00:24So the U.S. government in a collaborative fashion is supporting both the Haitian National Police and the Multinational Security Support Mission
00:36to help stabilize Haiti and create the conditions conducive for holding democratic elections in the country.
00:44That is what we are doing. We are doing this mainly through foreign assistance and through technical assistance from our law enforcement partners.
00:51That is the strategy of the U.S. government right now.
00:54So how are you supposed to get them in the U.S. government?
00:58So the point of the rewards offer is to get information about these individuals.
01:07And then we are working very closely with Haitian National Police.
01:10So that is one of the mechanisms.
01:12If we can get information, the individuals can get up to $5 million.
01:16Our U.S. law enforcement colleagues will work with Haitian National Police and will arrest this individual and incarcerate him.
01:22I have a question about the co-defendant.
01:23You said he was picked up in Texas, right?
01:25I noticed in the indictment he's a naturalized citizen and there's been an effort by this administration to, in some cases, denaturalize people who are convicted of crime.
01:34Is that something on the table that we'll be looking to do once he goes through the judicial process?
01:39Well, I think it's a little too early now to really comment on that.
01:43I think right now our goal is to get a conviction here and then we'll make a decision as to what's appropriate.
01:49There's a lot of steps before we even get to that.
01:52Anything else on Charizier?
01:54Do you plan to indict other Haitian gang leaders?
01:58Is this just the beginning?
01:59And do you have any sense of where he might be?
02:01If we knew where he was, I wouldn't tell you.
02:04I'd go over there myself.
02:05No.
02:06Right.
02:07That was a joke.
02:09We certainly have some information, but, you know, we need whatever information we can get from the public.
02:18We don't have him in our custody.
02:21That's all I can say right now.
02:23Do you want to add anything to that, guys?
02:26Okay.
02:27All right.
02:29Greg, anything?
02:32All right.
02:33Thank you, gentlemen.
02:35Put that up.
02:36Don't take the poster just yet.
02:37Can we get blue pictures?
02:39Are you done with this one?
02:40No.
02:41Hold on a second.
02:42Give him that one if he wants to look at that.
02:43Put that over there.
02:44Can you help Salah?
02:45Sure.
02:46Everyone put that over there.
02:47Put this up.
02:48Thanks.
02:50All right.
02:51Greg, anything?
02:52All right.
02:53Greg, anything?
02:54All right.
02:55Thank you, gentlemen.
02:58Thanks.
02:59Thank you very much.
03:00All right.
03:01Are you done?
03:02Are you over here?
03:03We'll have them up here for you guys to shoot afterwards.
03:04Yeah.
03:05They'll be here.
03:06You can take a look at them.
03:07You know, there has been a great deal of discussion.
03:08There's been a great deal of discussion about crime in the district.
03:09And the other day, I wanted to get a sense of what is actually happening.
03:13in the District of Columbia.
03:14in the District of Columbia.
03:15I asked for the number of teams in the District of Columbia.
03:16You know, there has been a great deal of discussion about crime in the district.
03:21And the other day, I wanted to get a sense of what is actually happening in the District
03:26of Columbia.
03:27I asked for the number of teams who have been shot and killed by gunfire.
03:34teens, everyone under the age of 20.
03:35As you can see, in 2024, we have, I believe I said it was, how many, yeah.
03:49As you can see, in 2024, we have 29 individuals who were shot and killed in the District.
04:11All teens, some as young as three years of age, okay, because of gunfire.
04:20Some of these cases are solved.
04:22Some of them are not solved.
04:24But what this makes clear to me is that there is a whole community that is suffering because
04:31of the violent crime in this district.
04:33And anyone who wants to tell me the crime is down and that we don't need an emergency
04:40focus on crimes of violence.
04:42All they need to do is take a look at this and talk to the loved ones and the family members
04:49of these individuals, all shot and killed long before their time.
04:55Now, over here are the individuals who were shot and killed under the age of 20, all teenagers,
05:0620, 25.
05:07And the number here is 16.
05:11Again, all members of the minority community here.
05:16I don't know how many of these cases have been solved.
05:21But what I can tell you is, again, it's guns on the streets.
05:26It's individuals who are not concerned about accountability, who don't have any reason to fear law enforcement.
05:35I am here today to tell you that on behalf of all of these victims, all of these families,
05:42that they're going to be accountable, that we are going to make a difference,
05:47and that we are going to make sure that law enforcement is focused on these innocent,
05:52now silent victims of crime in the district.
06:07Anywhere else?
06:09All I know is we rank in deaths.
06:12Two years ago, we were the fourth highest in the United States.
06:16I don't need any more statistics.
06:19All I need are people to recognize that these were vibrant human beings cut down because of illegal guns.
06:28I guarantee you that every one of these shootings was with an illegal gun.
06:33All right?
06:34And I guarantee you that every one of these individuals was shot and killed by someone who felt that they were never going to be caught.
06:43And I want to send a message that we are going to catch you, that we are going to change the laws,
06:49that if you're 14, 15, 16, 17, we're going to bring you into the justice system.
06:55No more of this D.C., you know, counsel, oh, you know, if they're under 16, or if they're under 19,
07:02or if they're under 25, we'll give them probation.
07:04No more.
07:05I'm done with that.
07:06You said it's guns on the...
07:08...that you face, and you're talking about right there,
07:10but what can you conceivably do as a D.C. U.S. attorney to address those laws,
07:15address the D.C. crime line, which is not accredited,
07:18and also at the same time address some of the prosecutorial issues you talked about?
07:22Okay.
07:23Those are great questions.
07:26Number one, the D.C. crime lab is now accredited and validated very recently.
07:31So Dr. Diaz has communicated that to us, and we are working with the D.C. crime lab.
07:36Our concern is making sure that we have enough people who are able to analyze the DNA
07:45and all of the testing that we need to have done.
07:47That's number one.
07:48Number two, as it relates to prosecution,
07:52I have been very clear that Title 16 is not enough.
07:58Under Title 16, if you are 16 or 17 years of age, we can get you for rape, one, murder, robbery, one,
08:09but if you shoot someone and don't kill them, I don't have jurisdiction.
08:15It goes to the Attorney General, the State Attorney General, Brian Schwab, and the focus is family court rehabilitation.
08:25Now, I was a family court judge in New York for a short period of time.
08:29The mission there is not punishment, it's rehabilitation.
08:33As evidenced by, do we have those posters?
08:36Yeah.
08:37We had a poster with a, what you get is yoga and you get ice cream socials in family court.
08:46Well, I'm done with yoga and ice cream socials.
08:49We've got to change the law to bring them into the justice system.
08:53We've got to get rid of the three statutes or three laws passed by the DC Council.
08:59Number one is a Youth Rehabilitation Act where you basically say with the Youth Rehabilitation Act that what we're going to do is we're going to say, you know, if you're sentenced and you're under the age of 25 that the judge can give you probation irrespective of what the crime is.
09:20That's nonsense. And that's why a judge, and you're tired of hearing about me say this, that's why a judge gave a 19-year-old two, three weeks ago, and I wrote an op-ed piece, gave a 19-year-old probation, and I understand it's two years probation to go to college with no mandate, for getting on a public bus with an illegal gun shooting an individual in the chest, which to me is intent to kill,
09:49to kill, and he walked away after we convicted him, he walked away with no jail time.
09:58If that's what you want in this district, then I'm the wrong person to be United States Attorney.
10:03Number one, the Incarceration Reduction Act. The Incarceration Reduction Act that the DC left-leaning council passed says if you're 25 years old and you were sentenced to 15 years as a young kid,
10:18for probably murder, even a serial murderer, we can let you out if you're 25. We can let you out because, not because you're rehabilitated, not because the offense wasn't that bad, but because we can. And that's got to go.
10:37All right? And the third thing is record sealing. I go through all of the effort to get a conviction, and they want to seal the convictions. They want to say, we want to seal convictions after five years.
10:52If I'm a mother, and thank God my kids are older, if I'm a mother, I want to know if a nanny has an assault conviction. If I'm an employer, I want to know if this person has been convicted of larceny or petty larceny.
11:07Or if, say, I'm not in a public school, but I got a private, like, teaching a tennis group. I need to know if this guy's a predator, a pedophile. Everything about the DC council's focus is defendant-oriented.
11:22I'm oriented to these people, and the people of the district are as well.
11:27I don't have any special powers. I wish I did.
11:37Can you talk about where you stand on hiring prosecutors and judges?
11:43I'm not going to bore you with the facts. Don't quote me on that. That was off the record.
11:55I can only hire during certain periods once there's been an ad or some kind of posting, and then I can hire.
12:03Okay? I'm doing it. I'm doing the best I can. The president has given me the permission to hire.
12:09This is an office that has been neglected, and I'll say it publicly. It's been neglected.
12:15With people signing contracts, they didn't know what they were signing. All right? It just kind of ran on its own. Not anymore.
12:22This is an office where nobody seemed to care that we were down 90 lawyers, 60 investigators, and paralegals. I do.
12:30And so my effort is to get people who want to work in the nation's capital, who want to work in the largest United States Attorney's Office in the country, and the best office.
12:39Because we're not just federal prosecutors. We're local prosecutors. We get down and dirty in street crime.
12:46And that is what really motivates a lot of my prosecutors.
12:51You just walked through the changes you'd like to see from the punitive aspects. What about preventative?
12:56Do you or the president plan to do anything to address the root causes of crime in D.C., such as truancy?
13:08My job is to try to heal the victims and prosecute the criminal. Everybody else can deal with rehabilitating the individual.
13:20I honestly am not concerned about why they commit crimes. My concern is if they commit crimes.
13:27My concern is the victims of the crimes. That's my job as a U.S. attorney. Go ahead.
13:33Just follow up on that quickly.
13:40Yeah.
13:42Mm-hmm.
13:44Mm-hmm.
13:48Mm-hmm.
13:52Mm-hmm.
13:56Mm-hmm.
13:58Mm-hmm.
14:00Mm-hmm.
14:02Go ahead and ask me questions.
14:07Why did everybody spotify my ».
14:08Well, I Locke never left with me.
14:09I've just used to get into it now.
14:11I spoke with the president and I have spoken to the president before about these vacancies.
14:14The president wants vacancies filled as soon as possible.
14:16Because like everyone in this room, it's common sense.
14:18It's not fair to the victims, to the families.
14:20It's not fair to the defendant.
14:22have to live with a case for three years because there's not enough judges we're all on the same
14:27page about what makes sense and what's fair and so we're working on that there's a whole thing
14:32with the judicial nominating commission and then they have to get approved and then we have to get
14:37the senate to approve yeah ask you can ask the senate soon very soon soon
14:52okay you're out of time that means you've had enough goodbye thank you i want you to report
14:58on it but you said you said it's guns you said it's guns on the street that's causing this problem are
15:02you concerned that the doj's funding cuts to gun violence prevention programs undermine the effort
15:08we are putting all kinds of resources onto the street but what about the gun aspect of the gun
15:14violence thank you guys thanks
15:24it's never enough this change this changed it's never enough you tell these families
15:32crime is dropped you tell the mother of the intern who was shot going out for mcdonald's near the
15:39washington convention center oh crime is down you tell the kid who was just beat the hell and back
15:45with a severe concussion and a broken nose crime is down no that falls on deaf ears and my ears are
15:52deaf to deaf to that and that's why i fight the fight thank you
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